It has become commonplace for people carry personal portable devices (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, PIMs, MP3 players, PNDs, etc.) that they employ to listen to recorded audio, view recorded video, capture a visual image, engage in audio/visual conversations with others, or to perform still other audio/visual tasks. Such personal portable devices are meant to be easily movable from place to place by being easily carried on the persons of their users in some way (e.g., in a pocket, strapped to an arm or wrist, worn over the head or around the neck, clipped to a belt, etc.). Further, such personal portable devices commonly provide a way in which to be directly used in engaging in audio/visual tasks, often by incorporating microphones, speakers, cameras and/or video displays.
However, the portable nature of personal portable devices often means that compromises must be made in supporting direct use of these devices to engage in audio/visual tasks. For example, speakers and video displays are often of a smaller size that render them less capable of reproducing audio or video imagery of a quality that would be achievable were size for the sake of portability not a concern. A common solution for a user of personal portable device who is to remain in one place for some period of time has been the provision of base devices that each have a docking interface to which a particular personal portable device may be physically connected (i.e., “docked”) to enable the base device to support higher quality audio and/or video in audio/visual tasks. These base devices are commonly far larger, and therefore, far less portable than the personal portable devices with which they are capable of docking. This enables the use of such components as speakers and video displays that are permitted to be larger, and thereby capable of reproducing higher quality audio and/or video imagery.
Examples of such base devices are the various incarnations of the SoundDock® series of base devices manufactured and sold by Bose® Corporation of Framingham, Mass., meant to be docked with various incarnations of the iPod® series of personal portable devices manufactured and sold by Apple® Corporation of Cupertino, Calif. Docking one of the incarnations of the iPod® with one of the incarnations of the SoundDock enables a user of that iPod® to listen to a higher quality audible output of recorded audio than is possible by employing the earbud-style earphones that are provided with that iPod®.
However, such base devices commonly have docking interfaces that are compatible with only a very limited number of personal portable devices, and in a number of cases, such base devices have docking interfaces that are compatible with only one personal portable device. It is common for different personal portable devices to have casings of different physical shapes, different power requirements for the recharging of batteries, different digital interfaces employing different protocols for the transfer of data (including audio and/or video data), different analog interfaces employing different signal characteristics, among other differences.